MEN WITHOUT WOMEN [1930] - The crew of a sunken sub awaits rescue. This movie was made right on the cusp of the change from silent to sound, and some of the dialog is heard while some must be read.

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP [1932] - A sub captain, his wife, and his 2IC, who is also his wife's lover, bounce off each other (yes, all three of them) in his crippled vessel.

HELL BELOW [1933] - This time the 2IC is in love with his disapproving captain's daughter, and when the captain drowns the 2IC's best friend by diving too quickly to avoid aircraft attack the 2IC gets really angry.

MORGENROT [German, 1933] - Set in 1915. A German sub sinks a British cruiser but is itself sunk by a destroyer in shallow water. Most of the sub is flooded and not all the survivors can escape to the surface.

SUBMARINE RAIDER [1942] - Listen to this. A girl is rescued by a U.S. sub after a Japanese aircraft carrier heading for Pearl Harbour sinks her yacht. The sub is unable to warn Pearl because it is attacked by a plane from the carrier. When they hear the news of the attack on Pearl they let the carrier find them again and lure it to its doom.

CRASH DIVE [1943] - This time the captain and his 2IC are in love with the same girl only they don't know it - at first. When they find out, it complicates their mission to launch a commando raid on a Nazi supply base.

DESTINATION TOKYO [1943] - Before the Doolittle Raid could respond to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour a U.S. sub had to do a recon mission. This is the story of that mission.

WE DIVE AT DAWN [1943] - A British sub is sent on an almost suicide mission to sink a Nazi battleship that is harbored behind strong defences.

WESTERN APPROACHES [1944. a.k.a. THE RAIDER] - A Nazi sub sinks a British merchant ship then waits to attack rescue vessels. It sinks one but is itself sunk by cannon fire.

LES MAUDITS [French, 1947] - Nazi officials attempting escape to South America on a u-boat are depth-charged off France. Coming ashore for medical help, they kidnap a French doctor who eventually persuades them to surrender.

THE FLYING MISSILE [1950] - Drama about the first launching of a guided missile from a submarine.

ON THE BEACH [1959] - Only partly a sub movie. As the deadly fallout of WW3 poisons the world, a U.S. sub sets out from Australia to investigate apparent radio signals coming from North America.

OPERATION PETTICOAT [1959] - Comedy. A sub rescues some nurses and, needing a paint job and having only red and white paint, ends up painted pink. Great camoflage, guys.

ORZEL [Polish, 1959] - True story of a Polish sub that escaped the Nazis, teamed up with the British and sank a German troop transport during the invasion of Norway. 'Orzel' is Polish for Eagle, a curious name for a sub.

UP PERISCOPE [1959] - Is the sub's captain a coward? His 2IC doesn't think so and resists mutinous mutterings from the crew. The reverse of the 'overly fanatical captain' plot.

VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA [1961] - This is notable as the worst use of sub technolgy in a sci-fi movie. Ridiculous and dull. So of course it became a television series.

MYSTERY SUBMARINE [1963] - A Nazi u-boat is captured by the British and used as an imposter among the wolf-packs. It is detected and attacked; the crew is rescued.

THE BEDFORD INCIDENT [1965] - Cold War gets hot in the Arctic as U.S. destroyer hunts Soviet sub.

ASSAULT ON A QUEEN [1966] - Would-be pirates salvage a WW2 sub and use it to hold up the liner Queen Mary.

ICE STATION ZEBRA [1968] - Cold War adventure of a U.S. sub with a saboteur aboard and on a mission to beat a soviet sub to an Arctic weather station which has vital strategic information.

GRAY LADY DOWN [1978] - A U.S. nuclear sub collides with a tanker and sinks. The crew waits to be rescued.

DAS BOOT [German; 1981] - The story of the final mission of a WW2 German u-boat. Considered by many to be the best sub movie ever made. The 'Director's Cut' is the preferred version.

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER [1990] - The captain of a Soviet super-sub wants to defect to the U.S., or does he?

THE LAST U-BOAT [German, 1990] - A u-boat with a combined German / Japanese crew is taking plutonium from Japan to the Nazi A-bomb project when news comes of the end of the war.

CRIMSON TIDE [1995] - When a nuclear sub loses contact with the chain of command during an international crisis, the fanatical captain intends to launch his missiles but his 2IC leads a mutiny against him.

DOWN PERISCOPE [1996] - Comedy. By sheer gumption and cunning, the foul-up crew of a conventional sub defeats a nuclear sub at a war games exercise.

HOSTILE WATERS [1997] A Russian sub collides with an American sub off Bermuda, which creates both a political and an environmental crisis. Based on a real incident.

THE HUNLEY [1999] The true story of a Confederate States submersible (manually powered) which attacked and sank a U.S. ship during the Civil War. Stranger than fiction.

U-571 [2000] - Historically misleading film which shows an American crew capturing the Nazi 'Enigma' code machine. In fact it was a British crew that captured it.

K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER [2002] - True story of a huge Soviet sub that was ordered to sea before it was properly finished being built, successfully tested a missile, and then suffered leaks in its nuclear reactor leading to the deaths of many of its crew from radiation poisoning.

BELOW [2003] - In 1943 an American sub rescues three British survivors of a hospital ship apparently sunk by an enemy sub. One of the Brits is a woman, and she discovers that the sub's official commander is missing. Then the sub begins to have extremely bad luck, and eventuallly seems to develop a mind of its own, altering its course and heading back to where the commander was lost.

Author Comments:

Titles in ITALICS are the ones I'm sure I've seen.

Titles in ITALICS AND BOLD are the ones I recommend. (Thanks to Jim for the suggestion.)

Damn bertie, I am continually impressed by the originality of your lists (and I mean that as a compliment). Thanks for kicking in yet another winner. Never would I have thought I'd want to see so many submarine movies. And I am randomly reminded of how much I enjoyed that scene in The Hunt for Red October where Connery turns the sub around to head *toward* the pursuing torpedo.